First 100: Your Questions About Biden and the Pandemic, Answered

Plus, more Congressional Review Act resolutions released.

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It’s March 26, 2021 and welcome to First 100. You can sign up to have First 100 delivered to your email by clicking here.

The Chief

I missed President Biden’s first news conference, though judging from the reactions I didn’t miss much. The questions reflected the insular nature of the D.C. press corps, which doesn’t understand policy (there were multiple questions on the 2024 election?) The transcript indicates that no reporter asked anything about the pandemic—you know, the thing that turned us into shut-ins for a year.

So let me remedy that by asking and answering a host of questions about COVID-19 and the Biden administration’s response.

Have we ended the pandemic? Not quite. With the end of the COVID Tracking Project we have to go to the CDC’s tracker. You can see that the map of COVID cases over time looks somewhat like the map of Virginia:

The difference is that Virginia comes to a stop, and the COVID cases took a left turn around Newport News. The 7-day moving average has ticked up slightly the past few days, and has basically been flat for close to three weeks. Infections are rising in a majority of states, in some cases by as much as 30 percent.

Now, that’s not entirely bad. As vaccinations rise, particularly among the elderly, cases become less of a barometer of how we’re doing. About 80 percent of the deaths come from the population over 65, and 71 percent of them have gotten at least one dose of vaccine, with nearly 45 percent fully vaccinated. A case can be bad without being fatal, but as more at-risk people get vaccinated, the trends of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths ought to pull away from one another.

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So are people dying? People are still dying at about the peak rate of the summer surge. This is way down from the winter carnage, but it’s around 1,000 a day. And this has also flattened out over the past week after a significant drop. Hospitalizations have also flattened out, although it’s welcome that they continue to go down, albeit slightly. We just haven’t vaccinated quite enough of the population to see real changes in the numbers just yet.

So how’s that going? Better than most of the world. Biden said in his opening remarks yesterday that we would hit 200 million shots in arms in his first 100 days, and we are now on that pace, with a seven-day average of 2.5 million shots a day making up for lower figures at the beginning of Biden’s term. The numbers are likely to keep going up as age limits for vaccination are lowered or revoked (we just learned that everyone in California will be eligible by April 15). That puts us at around the 75 percent mark by maybe July.

That trajectory, however, is likely to surge throughout April and May and then drop off, as hesitant people waver on getting the jab. Some of this hesitancy isn’t really about the vaccine but about the mechanism to get an appointment, which inevitably includes using the internet. Eventually we will hit a point where demand will drop, but not now. So the real question for the Biden team is how they’re bridging the digital divide and making the vaccine accessible to all.

How are you bridging the digital divide and making the vaccine accessible to all? Thanks, good question. The administration recently announced a $10 billion investment in high-risk communities, although “getting people an appointment” wasn’t on the list of that funding. I know the administration wants to do a federal sign-up, but that won’t be released until May 1 at least.

The big question is where these resources are being delivered. The west coast, northeast and plains states have done a good job on vaccinations. The worst states for vaccinating the population are Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas. I see a pattern. Yes, ice storms, but also a disinterest in governance. That’s the hurdle the Biden team must surmount, because we know hot spots don’t stay inside state borders.

Will we have enough vaccine? You’d think the answer is “absolutely,” especially now that the AstraZeneca vaccine (after some hiccups about what data it was presenting to the public) is showing results that should approve it for use in the U.S. There is a strange lack of takeup on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the only one-shot vaccine approved, which would really help in tougher-to-vaccinate communities (it doesn’t require ultra-cold temperatures). States appear to be hording J&J doses until they have enough to institute a mass program to reach the underserved. This is a rerun of the equity question that hobbled the early rollout somewhat.

A bigger problem could be the EU’s proposed new rules to cut exports of the vaccine for up to six weeks; the U.S. gets some of its supply from there. They have not yet gone into effect, however.

What about vaccinating the world? This is critical, because ultimately our path forward out of this tragedy as a health and economic matter relies on a global solution. Right now we have severe vaccine inequality, which threatens the world. The U.S. has not agreed to the global proposal to take down IP protections for vaccines, and they haven’t really been pushed on it, certainly not by the domestic press. We’ve zealously guarded our supply and let China take the lead on vaccine diplomacy.

Eventually we will have a surplus, but we shouldn’t wait to help the world. We tie ourselves in knots on equity within the country and have followed the completely unequal global strategy of wealth dictating vaccine access. America First policies don’t make sense in this crisis.

Can you make it so this doesn’t happen again? Congress says they’re working on it, though advance preparation is not our strong suit. Funding for public health at the state and local level tops the list. Our response this time unnecessarily led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, so any fixes to that would be welcome. In a functioning government this would actually top the list of priorities.

Evolution on Resolution

More resolutions to nullify Trump-era regulations under the Congressional Review Act are finally rolling in. The one that I highlighted on Monday, the so-called “fake lender” rule, was introduced yesterday. This OCC rule enables federally chartered banks to rent out their charter to non-bank lenders as a means to get around state interest rate caps. Here’s a two-page summary. The EPA’s methane rule is also apparently on the chopping block, though I haven’t seen that formally introduced. This joins the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rule that I discussed Tuesday.

There are really dozens of potential CRA resolutions available, and “three” isn’t a great substitute with a little over a week to go before the deadline. But that appears to be as far as the Democratic leadership wants to go.  

What Day of Biden’s Presidency Is It?

Day 66.

Today I Learned

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